How to Get Into Momentum in Your Real Estate Business

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. To say I'm excited for this guest is an understatement. And I'll tee it off this way. You know, we just celebrated 100,000 downloads on the podcast. And my next guest, I think the last time I heard him quote his stats, and it's not like he's a stat quoter, but it's millions of downloads. And so Alice Charfen has a history in the real estate space. I was a certified distressed property expert back in the day. He built a massive business in real estate. He understands the psyche of a real estate agent and the industry and how it works. And so just to spend a little bit of time with Alex today is a true blessing and honor. And, and here's the thing, too. He's committed his life to serving folks that are just a little off in the head entrepreneurs. It's a small segment of the population that was wired to just go out into the world and just declare that they were going to find their way and make an impact, but earn money out of thin air. And so essentially, real estate agents, not all of them are entrepreneurs, but a good amount of real estate agents are entrepreneurs. And so, Alex, welcome to the podcast.

Lars, it's so good to be here. I appreciate you having me, for sure.

So let's start with, you know, we chatted before we hit the record button. Let's start with, you know, just like the psyche of a real estate agent and, you know, the solopreneur and, you know, we can't quite figure out how to get out of our own way, you know, and we're doing all these tasks all day long that aren't leading us to any sort of freedom with time or money. So chat about your experience with that.

You know, Lars, I think if you take a step back and you look.

At the real estate industry as a.

Whole, it's set up to create agent.

Failure and really to create a massive amount of pain for the individual real estate agent. And let me qualify what I mean by that. When you look at most brokerages out there, most, most of the organizations out there, they celebrate the single agent working on their own, making $100,000 a year. That is a celebrated position in real estate. You're a six figure agent. You're doing everything yourself. You have no help, but you're holding it all together and you're making six figures. That's like when most people get into real estate, that becomes one of the first targets that they are given by the industry. Like, you want to be the person who's at six figures doing it all yourself. Is that fair, Lars? Like, have you seen the same thing?

A hundred percent, yeah. And usually that person, they end up, you know, for their rookie year, you know, they're like, this is great. And then like year two or three, they're just miserable, Miserable.

And here's, here's what happens. The worst thing that you can do in real estate is be successful because it's going to beat you to death. And here's, here's the. You know, I watched this with my wife. So Katie was a real estate agent in the early 2000s. Her first year she did 90K. Her second year, she in GCI. Her second year she was 250 something. And her third year she was 300 and something. And the way that she got there was by getting help and by adding people who were actually on her team and doing things for her. But that was because she and I worked together on it. There was not a lot of coaching around how to actually get help as a real estate agent. Even at the brokerage level, even at the instructional level. That's one of the biggest voids in real estate. And as a result, here's what happens. The culture in real estate is, I'm so busy, I'm killing myself. I'm with clients all the time. If somebody calls me on a Saturday, I'm at their house within two hours. And there's very little boundaries and there's very little structure or process in how real estate is run. And when you, when you're in the market itself, there's not a lot of examples of, hey, timeout for a second. There's a better way to do this. There's an easier way to do this. There's a way to do this where you create success, but you don't give up your life and you don't inherently give, you know, let the people around you down. I think a lot of real estate agents are in the market because they wanted some type of freedom. They get into the real estate business and they, they marry this job where, if not set up correctly, you have literally no freedom, especially if you don't have somebody helping you. You. You know, I always joke that, you know, the busiest person I know is a real estate agent on vacation because they're trying to pretend they're on vacation and handle all the stuff that's happening back in the office. And that is like, for realtors, the busiest time they ever have is when they go on vacation. That is, to me, one of the saddest commentaries on how the industry is.

Set up and how we really are.

Pointing at the wrong thing as being successful.

Yeah. And so let's break that down. I know you know real estate B school, we coach to six phases of growth. It's similar to your nine levels, although I think you end at, like, your level three is our level six in terms of, like, dollars.

Right.

Let's talk about. Let's break down the first couple. You got 40, 100 and 300. And then 300 goes to a million. And so really, let's talk about in an abbreviated version. Folks can head over to your podcast, Momentum podcast. I think I actually know the episodes. It's like in the low 200s. Listen to phases one to four of the Billionaire Code. But let's break it down now that I have you on the podcast in a way where you could sort of coach someone through 40, 100, 300, a million. As you see it from the entrepreneurial personality type and how we're wired. So this is going to hit you in the right way if you are wired as an entrepreneur. Real estate B school, we don't deal with any agents or team leaders that aren't entrepreneurs. So they have to have this desire to build a business that is, it's an actual business. You're not working seven days a week. You. You're helping buyers and sellers, but you're not doing it yourself for the most part. Like, you're building systems in place to serve your clients at higher level. So kind of walk through a simple version of the first four levels of your code as you know the industry and you know agents and how they're wired.

Yeah, you got it, Lars. So what I want to start with first is take a step back from the four levels and just say, in order to even start this conversation as a real estate agent or if you're in real estate, I want you to reframe what success looks like, because here's what a lot of people think success.

Is in real estate.

I'm doing it all myself. I'm holding it together. I'm making it all work, and I'm making some money. And what I want people to think about in real estate is how am I providing the absolute best results for the people I'm working with without killing myself, without feeling like it's just me doing it all. And so the first thing that I think needs to shift is a part of this mindset where, yes, it takes a lot of work to get a real estate business up and running. So when we go through those first few levels, it does take a lot of work. But the mindset, the thought process has to be when and how do I get help? And here's what I want everyone in real estate to know. In my experience, the biggest issue with getting help is that agents wait way too long to get help. Sometimes so long that it's so far gone, they can't. They don't have the time to be able to make that help work. And so they just keep killing themselves. It's one of the biggest things that I watched in real estate. We still have some members in real estate. You're with us, Lars. You know, and I still know a ton of real estate agents, that the. One of the most common things in real estate, and I bet there's people listening that are in this situation right now, is that you work yourself into such a frenzy of business, you can't take the time to get help. I don't want anyone to get there. And so when we look at the first few levels of business growth, you know, really the first thing that an entrepreneur should do is set themselves up for success. If you're in real estate and you're just starting out or you're in the early stages, you need to take care of yourself. If you look at the real estate industry, we see the opposite of this. There's talk of hustle and, you know, being available all the time and working weekends and showing up to the open house and doing all this other stuff. But what you don't hear a lot in real estate is hydrate and work out and eat the right foods and get a morning routine in place and protect yourself. You know, if you want to live the life of your dreams, here is the path. It's through process. It's through process, structure and routine. Anyone who tells you different is selling you something. The reality is, is if you don't have process, hardcore process, structure and routine in your life, you will not have the life that you want. If you want to be successful, if you want to have a successful business where it doesn't feel like you're doing it all yourself, the path is through process, structure and routine. So early stages. First, we want you to take care of yourself. Then we want you to get really clear on your avatar. Here's one of the biggest issues I see in real estate. Every real estate agent's avatar is the same someone who's buying or selling a house. And if you're in real estate and you can buy, pare that down and get really clear on who you're working with, everything will change for you. Let me explain some of the numbers I shared about Katie earlier. The way she was able to go from 90,000 in commission, which was I think a seven or eight month year, so she didn't even have all 12 months. And then the way she was able to go to over 200,000 in her second year, we had a clear avatar. Kate we were in Florida and Katie worked with people who were in distress in foreclosure. This was before the foreclosure crisis. This is early 2000s. But we were targeting specifically people who were in distress who were in pre foreclosure where there was probate issues like the messy stuff. And because Katie handled the messy stuff, by the time she was in her second year and it was clear this is what she did. Realtors who would get a phone call from one of their clients that was in probate would refer to Katie. Realtors who would get a phone call from one of their clients who was in foreclosure would refer it to Katie. So that's, that's one avatar. But early on in business, if you do not separate the avatar you're calling on and get really clear on who that is, it gets very difficult to scale. Then that's another reason why so many realtors. You know, I think the average Realtor sells somewhere between six and 10 homes a year or something like that, depending on the brokerage. They're kind of making a decent living, but really not that much after expenses. It's because there is no avatar. It's just I'm searching for people buying and selling a house and then once you clarify that avatar and you go into the next stage of growth. Now here's where it gets important for real estate agents. This level is all about building systems and structure and process around having the same lead show up and getting your business to move forward. And so marketing systems that get the right person to talk to you and then process and structure and routine. So in your business you're not figuring out the same way over and over again. Lars this is one of the, like the interesting things that I saw in real estate over. I see in real estate over and over again, six figure business owners, they're doing the exact same thing. It's taking a contract to close. They don't have a process filled out. So they're treating every single contract like a brand new day they're driving. And as real estate agents, you know, oftentimes they don't even realize they could have a checklist, easy Process. If they sat down probably for two or three hours and said, okay, wait, what does it take from the day that I have signatures on a contract to get it to the closing table? What are all the thresholds I need to get somebody through? If you just spell that out, that process around what you do well, you. That changes everything. By the time for Katie, when she was in real estate, she had a process for contract to close. She had a process for every listing appointment. She had a process for how people she had listings with were allowed to contact her. We built process, structure and routine around everything. And that's how she was able to get to the point where within a couple of years, she was one of the top agents in all of South Florida.

Yeah. Awesome. So, you know, I think what we can go a little bit deeper on is, you know, real estate is this tricky business, right? Folks typically come into real estate not it's not their first choice of things to do. So they come in and they're like, I'm gonna get my license. It's gonna be great. You know, it's like an 80 plus percent failure rate by year two. And so they see this flexibility. So you mentioned routine. Let's go a little bit deeper into. Because I think that's one of the things I see that, you know, even in our members that are coming in, they're doing 500 to a million, 500k to a million. They have an administrator, maybe a couple, couple buyer agents, they forget about routine. So not only their morning routine, but they also forget that now they're running around like they think they have a team who could handle like new business development in the morning is an essential as a real estate agent. But now they don't have to do it because they have a team. So talk about, you know, how even as you're scaling, like morning routine, break it down. Like, what's, what's three or four things for a morning routine that you must be doing and then also, like even into the day, like, how do you sort of break that down into a day? I think that'd be helpful.

Yeah, you got it, Lars. So let's treat those separately. I want to do morning routine, and then I want to talk about how you create structure, process, and routine in your day to day as a real estate agent. So first let's talk about morning routine. So one of the reasons that, you know, it's funny, we have coaching programs where we work with, you know, Lars is one of our members. We work with a lot of the top on entrepreneurs around the world. And one of the first things we teach, when you get into our program, whether you're in our $3,000 a year program or our $30,000 a year program, we teach you how to drink water first, and then we teach you how to create a morning routine. Because here's what we know. We're going to teach people hardcore process, structure and routine to grow their businesses like crazy. But if we protect the entrepreneur first, if they're fully hydrated and they can get up every day and have the first hour of their day be the best hour of their day, we are going to have a different type of member we deal with. And the people who do those two things succeed like crazy in our programs. The people who don't, we send back to do those two things first and then come back and get, like, really start applying things. Because when you protect yourself, your business will grow. And so for me, my morning routine, every morning I get up, I have a written morning routine. So does my wife, so do my kids. I actually put checkboxes here. There are four things that are really important to me. Oxygenation, hydration, nutrition, and movement. So I want to make sure I'm breathing. I do breath work every morning and meditation. I want to make sure I'm drinking a ton of water. I want to be fully hydrated. I want to make sure I eat the right foods. Unless I'm fasting, which is the same as eating the right food. It's using nutrition in a different way. And then I want to make sure I move every morning. So when I get up, I'll read my current morning routine. And I adjust this constantly. I probably change it eight times a year right now to support what I'm going through right now. I get up, I clean my mouth, I hyperhydrate. I take my morning supplements. I read for about 20 minutes. If I have more time, I extend that. I meditate for about five minutes. If I have more time, I extend that. I go for a walk, which takes about 10 minutes. If I have more time, I extend that. Those are three places where I get more for myself if I can. I do a breathwork session outside. I come in, I do some really specific stretching for stuff that I'm going through right now. You know, this will change in the next six months. But I do a shoulder exercise, an abdominal exercise, some low back stretching on a ball, some calf stretching, and wall stretching. Then I wake up my kids. So I take about 10 minutes to wake up the kids. It's a slow process. We hang out, we chat a little bit, we joke around in the morning, and. And then they start their morning routines as I'm doing my planning and getting ready for the day. And so I use our momentum planning system. I use our entire business planning system. We don't sell anything. We don't use ourselves. My kids use the exact same system. So after I've woken them up and they've gone through their routines, they finished their planning, we sit down at our kitchen table, all four of us. So Reagan and Kennedy, my daughters and Katie, and we share our morning planning. And so all of us align around our planning system. Then we go for a walk as a family, and then we come back, and that's how we start our day. And so every day, when I check every box here, I know that I am optimized and ready to go. And I've done what I need to do to fully support myself, to show up like I need to in any given day. And then. Go ahead, Lars.

No, I was going to say that right there is. You know, we can stop the podcast early. I feel like, you know, having a morning routine, you know, I've had a morning routine for a long time, and it really. And also just ending your day well, you know, and getting to bed on time and making sure your environment is conducive for a good night's sleep, like sleep, hydration, what you eat and food, I mean, that is like, I don't think you can succeed in business if you're not taking care of those things. I think you can for a certain. I mean, I've heard you talk in the podcast, you know, about how you did it a different way. Your first run at success in the business world, you know, and your weight suffered and, you know, you figured figure some things out the hard way. So that's really, really helpful.

The fact. Yeah, Lars, you know, you're kind of making the story sound way better than it is. Here's what's interesting. I can tell the story two ways. Watch. When I was 21, I became a consultant through a series of fortunate events and ended up working with some of the biggest companies in the world. And over the course of being from 21 to my early 30s, I grew a consultancy that was responsible for hundreds of millions in sales, multimillion dollar organization, 14 offices throughout the US and Latin America, and a team of about 50 or 60 people. Doesn't that sound great? Like, it sounds awesome. It sounds like I'm like, you know, Ironman, let me tell you the other side of the story. I was working remote out of my home in Orlando. I had no idea how to manage people or put process, structure and routine in place. I kind of fought most of those things. Even though we use them in the business, I didn't use a lot for myself. I ended up working a lot of the times. 12, 14, 16, honestly, sometimes 20 hour days. I suffered from insomnia. Sometimes I'd fall asleep at my desk at midnight, wake up at 3:30 and just keep working. By the time when I started that business in my teens, in my late teens, I actually had done some fitness modeling. Now I want to make it clear, I was not a fitness model that made a bunch of money, but I had done some fitness modeling. So I at least looked like somebody who could stand in front of a room and represent fitness. And 13 years later, I was 300 pounds on five medications, about to be given a six just to combat the side effects of the first five. I was hypertensive, suffer from heart palpitations, back to insomnia, asthma, all kinds of.

Other stuff going on.

And that's the real story. You know, did all the financial stuff that I talk about happen? Did all the offices get open? Did all, yeah, but at the same time it almost killed me. And so I'm very careful that when I share those early successes, I always try to back it up with like, hey, this is what really happened. Because I think as entrepreneurs, both in our recollection of things and in our retelling of things, we share the highlights. I think we also need to share the reality or we're setting the people up around us who are part of our entrepreneurial family. We're setting them up for failure. And so the way that I shifted that and I've been able to grow much larger businesses which with more people, with more of an effect in the world, is to create hardcore process structure and routine. When I was younger, I used to think process structure and routine took away my freedom. Now that I'm 47, I've been doing this for a long time, worked with thousands of entrepreneurs around the world. The only path to freedom as an entrepreneur goes through process, structure and routine. It's just a fact.

Yeah, and I was just going to comment on that. You know, a lot of people, you know, for real estate, B school, you know, we talk about business freedom, you know, building your business in a way where it supports, you know, something other than you just grinding all day in real estate. And sometimes, you know, people will say like, you know, where's the freedom in all that? Structure, you know, and I'm like, the freedom is in my income and my ability to take time off. And my stress level is, you know, I've never weighed less than I do right now. And I. I get up in the morning, and I don't have anywhere to be until, you know, 10:45am you know, and so. But then my. But I'm calendared until 10:45am I'm just. I'm just deciding how my day looks and when I start and stop and. And it's this constant process. Talk about what you found. This will kind of hopefully lead. Lead in, you know, with. With time studies.

Yeah.

And it's such a revealing thing for someone to be honest about where they're spending their time. So someone to say, like, I want to do this in business, and I want to do this in my marriage, and I want to do this as a. As a father, and, you know, I want to run an ironman. Right. And then you look at their time study, and you're like, dude, you're playing three hours of video games a day.

Yeah. You can't do all this, you know.

So talk about time studies and the shock of those and the pain of those, but the benefit of those.

You got it, Lars. So this is a tool we used in real estate constantly, because not just for real estate agents, but for any entrepreneur. We.

Like I said, you know how in.

Recollection and retelling, we only share the highlights. Well, in any given day, when we look backwards, we only want to think about the highlights. Like, oh, look at all the good stuff I did. Not the time we wasted, not the things we didn't have to do, not the irritations we suffered, not the goddamn it we went through, not the angry client phone call we got. So here's what a time study is. A time study is, for most professionals, the only time in their lives where they have quantifiable data around where they actually spend their time. You know, I love human beings, but I'm fond of the saying, in God we trust everyone else. Show me your data. And I want to see numbers. I want to see actual reality before I make any decisions. And one of the ways that we've helped people transition from solopreneur or doing it all themselves to getting a lot of help is through doing time studies. Now. They sound horrible. I just want to put this out there up front. Like, this is the hardest thing that we sell as one of our tactics. It's also fundamentally the most important when it comes to transitioning from Doing everything to getting help. Here's why. When you look at the real estate industry, here's what most agents are told. When you're really busy, go get a closing coordinator. And so here's what happens. You're doing a ton of stuff, you're overwhelmed, and you go get a person who's going to just take care of closings, you know what ends up happening. You're still doing a ton of stuff and you're still overwhelmed. And then if you're doing really well, they say, go get a listing agent. And so now you go.

Or a buyer's agent.

And so now you have a couple of agents and a closing coordinator and you are still fundamentally overwhelmed. Just like I was in that business in my 20s. Like, I know how this feels from the inside out. And it's not until you finally get help for yourself that you stop the overwhelm and you stop exchanging time for money in such a dramatic way. And here's what I mean by this.

Here's what a time study is. For two weeks, you carry around paper. And I mean like paper. This time it makes noise, not an app. Don't do it on a computer. You carry it around and for in 15 minute increments, you write down what you're doing every 15 minutes, including wasted some time on Facebook, including got a phone call I wasn't expecting, including had a flat tire. Like, what are all the things that are frustrating, that are irritating, Everything for two weeks. And here's what happens after the first couple days, you will already be more efficient because the first time you have to write down I was screwing around on Facebook for two hours, you won't do it again. So it's going to be a very productive, enlightening two weeks. And here's what happens towards the end, or maybe at the end of the two weeks, is you start seeing that there are clear opportunities in your time. And the way that we have people address a time study is to first go through the process of getting it all for the first two weeks and then go through and mark. Everything that they did is one of two things. We have more qualifications. We also have people look at sleep and family time and meals and other things. But for the purposes of this podcast, let's just focus on two things. What is it you're doing that is tactical and what is it that you're doing that's strategic? So tactical means somebody else could potentially do it. Strategic means right now in your business, you have to do it. Here's what's interesting. Whenever We've done this with a real estate agent. Over 50% of their time is tactical, always. And so the way to get help as a real estate agent is to go through the time study process, look at all the tactical things you're doing, hire an assistant and hand them all of it. Like literally take the time study, turn those things into a job description and say, here's what you're doing. And if that includes going out to pick up signs and place flyers and get my dry cleaning and all kinds of other stuff, then you put it all on the list and someone else does it. And then you spend time getting that person to be able to do those things well for you. And three months later you do another time study and you do the exact same thing again. See this process of doing a two week time study, offloading the tactical. What always happens is you become more strategic. Then you work through that for a little while, get used to it, maybe get to a place where you're doing too much tactical again, then do the time study again. The members in our programs, we have them do for a year minimum. That means every quarter, the first two weeks of the quarter, they're doing a time study. We know it's one of the biggest accelerators you can have as an entrepreneur. If we have somebody who's growing their business fast, like we've had some people experience explosive growth. When we worked with Alex and Layla Hormozi, we started working with them around 2 million. About a year, maybe 18 months later, they were at over $30 million run rate. We had them doing two weeks on, two weeks off, two weeks on, two weeks off. Like, do the time study, hand it all off, do the time study, hand it all off. And so in real estate, if you're willing to do it once a quarter, here's what I can tell you. You're going to have this thing called data around where you manage your time, where 99% of real estate agents in the market are just treading water. You're going to start actually elevating above that by understanding exactly what you're doing.

Yeah. And it's a process that I. It wasn't as exact as you have it, but when I look back, you know, my first part year in real estate, I sold 27 homes. They weren't distressed. It was simple. I think I ran like a Craigslist ad at the time where you can have clickable images on Craigslist. So I got the marketing systems in place, lead generation, and all I did that next year was hire an administrator. And just give my administrator. My first year I made $14 an hour. So 10 months selling 27 homes. I think my gross was 176. I netted 36 grand.

Yeah.

So. And then I hired administrator. I think I tripled my income, you know, on an hourly basis. And I took my hours down. And then I'm like, I can't show homes evenings and weekends, you know, and I could get a buyer agent for like 30 to 40 bucks an hour. And I wanted to make 250 bucks an hour. So I just. Even my buyers, I let that agent show my buyers and then he worked with his own buyers. And it was surprisingly simple because I just looked at the value. I drew a line in the sand real early in my journey that I was going to make $250 an hour. So I wanted to make 500 grand. Pre tax work 2000 hours. Simple math. I wrote that number on 20 index cards at the time and everything I did. So I almost did a time study looking at like the thing I would have these cards on my computer saying 250. And if the thing I was doing was not like a listing appointment, working on a system, you know, doing, you know, building out a marketing system, something that I can get like a leverage result out of, I was just frustrated. And so I got up to $2,300 an hour in my real estate business. You know, and a quick story. I'm not going to say the guy's name, but you'll probably know who he is. He's one of the older, been around for 40 years, has a son who coaches coach.

Super hard to figure out who you're talking about already.

So I sent out a marketing piece and I said, you know, join me on this webinar how in the learn how I sell 312 homes working a day a week. And he sent that out to his whole list. His whole list. And basically just saying that he could sell me some swampland in Florida if they believe, you know, and that it was such an amazing.

Oh, so he sent it out to his list as a criticism of you.

Yeah. And so saying like it was possible.

Now I know exactly who you're talking about.

Yeah. And so this is the same guy that is still doing half day seminars around the country.

Well, and still telling people that they need to like knock on doors and do like.

Yeah, and so but it's like it's a, you know, the industry, like you started this off. The industry is setting everyone in it up for even if they achieve Traditional success. I'm guaranteeing you're going to work seven days a week and you're gonna miss out on something else in your life. And so it was just funny. I mean, I thought it was awesome. So the first thing I do is like, I get on camera and I record a video because somebody sent me his email and it was this just weird. I've never met the guy, but it's just a mindset that, you know, you can't, you can't not do all the things as an agent. Like you got a prospect in the morning, you got to go on appointments, you got to, you know, well, wait.

Lars, wait, wait, wait. I think it's more than that. Let's get very real about this. I think there's actually an opportunity to discuss one of the big diseases in the real estate industry.

Without naming any names, the reality is, is the majority of real estate coaches, the majority of real estate trainers, want to keep you a self employed overwhelmed agent. Because if you're a self employed overwhelmed agent, you keep paying them to feel like you're part of something and like you're moving forward and like you get accolade from somewhere. And so here's the reason. I guarantee, I think I know who you're talking about and it doesn't really matter. But if somebody reacted like that to an email being sent like that and sent it out to an entire list to say that it was a farce, here's why. They were defensive and scared. You scared that coach because he's looking at it saying, holy cow, I can't meet this promise. I can't tell people how to do this. There's no way I know how to make this much money in one day a week. So he had to go out and say, you were making it up, you weren't real, so that everyone in his following could go, oh, okay, we don't have to try and achieve that. We can go right back to the grind of the pain and frustration that we've been in and call it winning and stand up on a stage in a nice suit and get the award and then walk off stage, literally. Like walking off stage, answering the angry.

Call from the client.

I can't tell you, I've actually seen that exact scenario at more than one real estate conference where somebody's getting the big award and they're literally in a fight with a closing on the side of the, like standing on the side of the stage. And the reason is, is there's all these coaches and teachers in real estate that have never built more than just a single agent business. And I mean, I hate to call it out that way, but it's the reality. And when you have all these people out there coaching from a place of. I've never done anything different. When somebody comes along and says, hey, we can radically improve this industry, give people a lot better lives, make a lot more money and a lot less time, they have to shoot them in the back because it threatens their entire existence.

Yeah. And not to even talk about. Every MLS would go. Every board around the entire country would go out of business. If we even had a minimum standard to keep your license. Like, hey, what if you had to sell, like one home a month to keep your license? It would eliminate two thirds of real estate agents, and it would be awesome for our industry. It will never happen.

It'll never happen. It'll never happen.

Because plumbers, like, I think as a plumber, you need to be an apprentice for like three years or something crazy.

Like, I mean, if you look at a lot of markets like dental, they actually limit the amount of dentists in an area so that you don't run into the same scenario you have with agents where in the real estate industry, half of agents do less than one deal a year. And when you dig into that half, it's. Most of them are doing the less than. So they're not even at one deal a year. They don't like at a half a deal or a percentage split on a deal. And then there's a huge percentage that do nothing. And so when you look at how the real estate economy really works, the national association of Realtors and every local board is supported by the people not doing anything. If you're an agent who's. Who's hitting massive numbers, making a lot of noise, you're actually the anomaly that's kind of annoying to the entire system.

Yeah, that's right. So as we, you know. Yeah. As we, you know, kind of wrap up here, and I'm not sure I let you kind of comment on the first four levels, so I may have you go. So most of the industry lives in your first two. It's 0 to 40 and 40 to 100. Most small businesses, you know, and there's like, they won't get past 100, but then you go to 300 to a million. What are some, you know, two or three things that you would sort of say along that journey? So, you know, in that, you know, we're aligned, like, I want to take agents from our first, you know, our start phase is 100,000. Then we go into. I forget what I even call my second phase, but it's up to 500,000 and then it's a million, you know, so what does that journey look like? You know, is it talk through that a little bit as you see it, you know, just in the general sense of the entrepreneurial personality type.

The key is this, you know, and you said this earlier, Lars, that how is freedom with all that process? Like, how do you have freedom with all that process? And to me, the key of going from being a six figure entrepreneur to a seven figure entrepreneur, whether it's real estate or anything else, is how much are you willing to build process, structure and routine around what you do? Well, because here's what happens, especially in the real estate world. There is ego involved with being an entrepreneur. There is massive ego involved with being a real estate agent. All you have to do to see how much ego there is in real estate is compare most people's business cards to their face and you can see the ego is on the business card. Because, gosh, I remember when video conferencing first came out, we would go look at a real estate agent on their website and then they would show up on a conference and we would say, well, who's that? Why didn't the real estate agent come? It's because we have this in real estate. It's about image and ego. And here's who I am and here's how nice my signs are, and this is the listing I got. I think we need to like, take a step back from all of that and say, hey, how do you create process, structure and routine so that you get a consistent result with your client without being consistently overwhelmed so that you can run a real business, not a real estate practice, like, stop practicing, let's get this right, and run a real business where it grows and you're not overwhelmed. And the key here is, is stepping out of being the person who does everything for everyone. And I want to just pause for a second. I know that sounds logical, I know that sounds easy, but in our experience, specifically in real estate and a few other industries, that is the biggest thing that gets people caught up. It's, I wanted to make the call, I wanted to solve the problem, I wanted to do the thing. I wanted to, like, be involved. And as a realtor, you should separate yourself from the tactics and start looking at the results. Like, what is the result I can drive in this business. And if you're willing to spell out process, and when I say process, structure and Routine. It sounds really big, but let's get clear on it. For a real estate agent, you know, morning routine that gets you up and going every day, you need some semblance of a schedule each week so that you and your team know what you're doing. And then you need a solid contract to close process. You need a solid post contract process, you need a solid listing process. I'm running out of things to say here in the real estate industry. It's not like you need to go build a whole bunch of stuff. You know, we have some businesses where literally they have a program that indexes all of the processes that people need to use to run the business in real estate. And it's like four or five checklists and a few process documents and you're ahead of 99.9% of the market. So that's that to me, that's the biggest thing is shifting the mindset from you're going to do it all yourself to spelling it out in documentation to getting help with all of those processes.

Yeah, that's right. So my first administrative hire, you know, she was my marketing coordinator, my listing coordinator and my closing coordinator and then.

Probably part time psychologist.

Yeah. And she was licensed, right? She was licensed. That's exactly right. And she was crazy enough to join me. And. But we took that one relationship the year I did 44 sides, which was my first full year in real estate to we didn't hire a second administrator until the year we did 178 sides as a team. And that was just, it was three years later. But it really was like I knew when I was driving an hour from my home to show a buyer a home before I had a team, I was only doing it because it was, I was documenting a system.

Yeah.

How do you work effectively with a low priced buyer, you know, whatever it was at the time, or a trade up, you know, where you have, you know, two deals in one and just the mindset around like, what is this thing going to look like if I can't do every position? It is that e myth question. Like, how would I think about my business differently if I were to replicate it 10,000 times?

Yeah.

And you ask a real estate agent that question, you're like, what? I don't get it.

Yeah, it's hard to even think about.

Yeah, how could I not? I don't get it. Like, how could I not do it?

I'm licensed, I'm the only one who can. And, and you know, one of the things that we said before we hit record Here is, you know, I. I have the belief that most of the real estate industry is just set up to keep you in that place. And a lot of it is the discussion around license activity and a lot of it. And again, that's a real legal thing. But, geez, it's not as. Not as. As much of a barrier to injury as people look at it, is getting help. You know, a lot of people say, well, I'm a licensed realtor, so I can't have anybody help me. That is absolutely not the way to look at it. You can hire a licensed assistant if you need to, but man, assistants can offload like 80, 90% of the noise that you're feeling, and you just jump in for the licensed activity. And so there is a ton that you can do as a real estate agent so that it's not all falling on you.

Yeah, for sure. So what kind of parting advice do you have? And I also want to give folks an opportunity to get in touch with you. If you're an agent and you're listening, you know, and you're like, you're kind of just in the. You're feeling pressure at home, you're feeling pressure, you know, to. You're probably not delivering on the promises you made to your spouse. I think that's a lot of the pressure.

Or your kids.

Yeah, or your kids. Right. And you're sort of missing out on those things and you're being torn. You're drawn to the business because you think it's going to be the thing that allows you to, you know, what advice would you give to somebody that needs to kind of just take a better step forward?

Do not buy in to the mindset that every agent who is successful has to kill themselves. I think that's what I saw over and over again in real estate. You know, at one point, Katie and I, we bought Star Power from Howard Brinton. So we had in our network of the top,000 realtors in the United States, two or three hundred of them were our members. And so people who, like Gene shine up in Fort Hood, who has a $20 million real estate business, or. Gosh, I'm going to blank on a bunch of names right now, but people across the country who had, like, at the very height of the real estate market, and here's what I can tell you about the people who operate at that level. They're not killing themselves anymore. Anymore. They have a team, they have a structure, they have a system. They're the anomalies. And that mindset, the earlier you adopt the mindset that you are not going to do all of it, you're not going to kill yourself, just like Lars said. That's such a good example. The only reason you should drive an hour for a buyer's appointment is to document that process so that the next time you're not doing it. And so as early as you can start documenting your processes, you have a special and unique way of doing this. Spell it out. Make sure that you know exactly why you're good at what you do so you can show it to somebody else. And do not look at success as an agent as you're the one who checked every box, crossed every T, and dotted every I. That is a mentality that is instilled in you from the day you go to licensing to the day you sign up with a broker to most of the training you will take. The way to really look at it is the way to success as a real estate agent is to get the outcomes. And I know this is going to sound crazy, doing as little as you possibly can. The most successful agents I know refuse to do the things that most agents will do. And that's how they created success.

Yeah, it's, you know, so I still work one day a week, regardless of what this other coach might want to think. It's been like seven years now. And we read client testimonials on Tuesdays when I go into the office. And the words that folks have to say about us, like, a full 15 sentences of just like, this handoff was meticulous. Mimi made me feel this way. You know, the agent, the showing agent, the. You know, we've got probably four or five people touching the client. But it's really well orchestrated. Like, there is no way I would want to compete with our real estate team if I was a solo agent. And there are hundreds of really good agents in our market. We have 17,000. So hundreds is, you know, but still, I wouldn't like the future of real estate. You better figure out a way to deliver in line with, like, the best service companies in every industry, you know, and if you're not thinking about, like, man, how can I really blow this client away from a. You know, even in. I got your email this morning about, like, how can we get better? Yeah, you know, like, most agents don't want to survey their clients to find out, like, how they can get better, you know, because the process was like, balls were definitely dropped because you're either good at sales or administrative stuff. And if you don't have administrative support, you're probably messing up. So. Yeah, so I thought, you know, it's, it's really satisfying to know that I never liked working with buyers and sellers. I wasn't very friendly. You know, I'm an introvert. If I showed up to an appointment, I was late, I didn't want to be there anyway, you know, and so to think of how far, you know, I'm making more money per hour than I ever thought was possible. And it was because, you know, it was. What are the three words? Process, structure and routine.

Absolutely.

And I still haven't let go of my routine, even though, you know, I don't have to get up and work today. But I know there's this big impact. So here's what I would say about, you know, anyone who's listening. If, you know, there's more, you know, in you, you want to have more impact in your family and, you know, with your clients, you know, build a real business. What's the best thing? I mean, I'm thinking of one thing. My actually the first way I came in and I think I was at the first Star Power event when you first took over.

Oh, really?

That's so cool. But I was never in Star Power. I think I was. I was. I went Craig Proctor to start and then I went a couple different paths and I lost my train of thought.

No worries, I can pick it up, I think.

So I came in through your Momentum Masterclass.

Yeah. So you know what's awesome about that, Lars? October 6th, 7th and 8th, we're doing momentum Masterclass free. So we're actually going to do some entrepreneurial personality type and billionaire code stuff. I'm going to be sharing exactly how to figure out where you are in your real estate business and then where you're going next. And so October 6th, 7th and 8th, we have a promotion called Momentum Masterclass. If you go to momentummasterclass.com, you can register for it. And God, I had a thought when you were talking. You know how you just said you get these page long testimonials but you're not involved? Here's what's interesting. Every Realtor believes that if they're not shaking the hand, opening the door, filling the lockbox, putting the flyers in the box, that they're not going to get the testimonial about them. But what we just heard from Lars is that Lars is barely there one day a week not talking to anybody and getting paid long testimonials. Here's how I translate that process relieves client anxiety 100% of the time, the more protected somebody is in a process, the more they will give you a testimonial. And so when you look at the Ritz Carlton, there's a process to get your bags out of the car, to get you into your room. There's a handoff each way. If you've ever been to a Ritz Carlton property, you get to your room and you're like, man, that was a little overwhelming, how much help I just got. But you never feel like you're lacking for something or don't understand something or don't know how to use something. And so that same thing in real estate, if you create the process, you don't have to be there. The process will deliver for you.

Yeah. And sometimes, if you haven't ever sort of built a business, you get a little overwhelmed with the thought of doing that or hiring a person. And how am I going to manage them? I've never managed anybody. It's. It's. I wish it were more complicated than, like, here's how I prepare to show homes for a buyer.

Yeah.

The MLS sheets. I put a cover sheet on it that has a referral statement on the bottom. You know, I make sure there's water in my car.

I have a few pens with me.

Yeah. I have a contract.

Katie had like a leaving for a listing appointment checklist, and we literally had car keys, business cards, two pens. Like, all the little eccentricities that. So that you don't have to think.

Yeah. And so I wish it was more complicated than just deconstructing that. Like, there's 12 solid jobs a real estate agent does, and there's 8, 9, or 10 that don't make a lot of money. And so there's only a few that you need to elevate into those few. You're working with buyers is not going to make you 2, 300 bucks an hour.

No.

You know, it's going to make you.

Good way to get started.

Yeah, it's a. Yeah, exactly. So momentum masterclass.com. that's awesome. And that really does break down. You're going to break down all the hydration stuff and the personal routines or any of that.

I'm doing as much as we did in the former product. Momentum masterclass, this is a free product. What we're going to go through is the entrepreneurial personality type and the billionaire code and understanding of where you are. Then we're going to go through how to build a plan to execute what you need right now, and then an understanding of how you create momentum and what you should do next to get there. And so it's not everything that we used to sell under the brand Momentum Masterclass, which you had, Lars, but it is a lot of it. And this time it's absolutely free. We want to put several thousand people through this course all at once and see how much of an impact we can make in the entrepreneurial world.

Awesome. That sounds good. We'll head over there. And this has been awesome. I appreciate you just the way your brain thinks and just in your leadership, we were talking about another guy that we both know before we hit record and just there's a better way as you do this journey of business ownership and you bring people in your world and there's just a better way to lead with more empathy to pick up on your. You know, a lot of times a busy real estate agent, their first hire, it's the worst person to be because that agent is so reactive. They don't have any documented processor systems. They're not taking care of themselves, and they're really a tough person to be around. So I guess that's my parting word. You know, off your training from. Was it this week or last week? No, this week. Yeah, just empathy. Like, just bring. Bring more empathy. I did a call with a marriage counselor this morning, like my one on one call with our marriage counselor, and I don't have a lot of it. Empathy is like really low. So in a world that, you know, there's a lot of election year, just all the craziness going on, racial tensions, Covid, you know, just bring more empathy to your neighbor, I think would be an awesome way to end this. So appreciate you. Momentum Masterclass is a place to go, and we'll talk to you guys soon.

And Lars, just one last thing. I just want to say how much I appreciate you because what you do in real estate, I think is similar to what we do in entrepreneurship. And I'm so glad there's finally an organization that is showing agents how to elevate above the noise, build real businesses and show up in the way they want to for their families and for themselves. And so, dude, I appreciate so much what you do. The real estate industry has had a void here forever, and I'm glad you're finally.

Yeah, awesome. I appreciate that. Yeah, there's just. There's going to be a lot of regrets in the lives of real estate agents that pursue this. Like, you got to do it this way. So I appreciate those kind words. All right, we'll talk to you guys soon.

Thanks, Lars.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for listening to the Business Freedom Podcast. If you're getting value from the podcast, would you please leave us a five star review and share it with others who might benefit from the content I'm sharing? And if you're ready to scale your real estate business sustainably and profitably, there are a couple options for you. If you're doing under 500,000 in annual GCI, our business foundations Program is for you. Head over to get businessfoundations.com that's getbusinessfoundations.com and learn how you can make the shift from overwhelmed real estate agent to true business owner. If you're doing more than 500,000 in annual Team GCI, there's our graduate program designed for top producers and team leaders who want to grow their team and scale their business. If that's you, go to realestatebschool.com and apply for a free Business Growth Strategy session. No matter where you are in your business growth journey, we have the tools, systems, strategies, training and coaching to get you where you want to be. Remember, only you can create your future, so take action now.